The Enchantress.

"Through the mist, through the woods, through the darkness and the shadows it's a nightmare but it's one exciting ride..."  - Beauty and the Beast, Mob Song/Kill The Beast

Wouldn't you know it, another round of one of my favorite events starts today: Enchantment!   It resonates deep inside my writer soul because each and every theme is based on a fairy tale of some kind and this round they are presenting Beauty and the Beast.

In case you don't know how Enchantment works; every participating store has a stamp machine that you touch for free wearing your stamp card (or 15 stamp cards if you want, they don't mind!).  Get your stamp cards from purchasing Enchantment goodies at specially marked vendors in the participating stores.  Once your stamp card is full (ie: you touched the stamp machine at each location) you take it to the prize location and redeem your stamp card for any special limited-edition prize of your choosing (be sure to wear only ONE stamp card at a time while you do this or you'll void all your other stamp cards and then you can't get the other prizes!).  These prizes will never be released or sold again by the stores, so be sure to get them while the event is ongoing!  The rose accessory you see below is one of the above mentioned limited-edition prizes, isn't it stunning?

I love fairy tales and fables, growing up with those big skull-crusher book collections of Aesop's Fables and Grimm's Fairy Tales.   Aesop's taught me valuable lessons, like foxes are assholes and what cranes are, while Grimm was slightly scarier.

If you watched the Disney movie you get the general idea, except in my book Belle had two sisters that were so jealous of Belle's stories of her life with the Beast that they tried to get her to stay longer than agreed in hopes that the Beast would become enraged and eat her.  I know right?  Most of Grimm's Fairy Tales have a significantly different ending than what is usually portrayed in the cartoons.  The best has to be Cinderella: one stepsister cut off her toes and the other cut off the heel of her foot to fit into the glass slipper when Prince Charming came looking for the girl that fled the ball.  Then the stepmother was put in red-hot iron shoes fresh out of the furnace and was forced to dance to death in them at Cinderella's wedding to the Prince.  Something like that makes an impression on a young mind lemmie tell ya'.

That being said, Fashion Fair is also beginning today and with it comes this gorgeous gown.  Obviously I went with a red theme because Valentines Day is coming up and since I'm sure you'd rather see this than my traditional arrow through the head, I gussied up with some accessories from around the grid including incredible horns made of arrows (still keeping with tradition in a way)!   Both Fashion Fair and Enchantment run for the duration of February.  A sample of the prizes are below, as is the gorgeous setting for the photo!

Location: Sky High

Body: Maitreya Mesh Body - Lara
Hair: little bones. Feline (free for group)
Horns: Remarkable Oblivion - Cherubim Horns (cupid)
Dress: [Stitched] - Backless Myr (available at Fashion Fair)
Lips: [Pink Fuel] Classic Pout Lipstick - Red
Mesh Eyes: .la petite morte. - clarity eyes (yellow)
Mesh Eyeliner: -Glam Affair- Couture Eyeliner no.03
Ears: [MANDALA] Steking Ears Season 5
Collar/Accessories: no.7 - Beast Rose (available for Enchantment)
Pose: F*cking Ninja - Water Willer 2 (available on marketplace)

I'm a Wild One.

"I'm a real wild one.  An' I like a wild fun.  In a world gone crazy everything seems hazy, I'm a wild one." - Iggy Pop, Real Wild Child

Lately I've been covering so many fantasy themed events that I found myself really getting into the spirit of them.  Over the past month I've been perfecting my centaur warrior look and thanks to The Secret Affair (this round ends on the 29th of January by the way, so you better haul yourself over there before it does!) I was finally able to complete it.   Everybody has an ensemble with two dozen pieces and you adore each and every single last one of them with every fiber of your pixel being.  This one is absolutely mine.

Location: Pure Dreams

The List:
Hands: SLink Casual
Centaur Body: ::Beetlebones:: Mesh Centaur Body Attachment (black)
Horns: +Half-Deer+ Aventine Horns - Wicked
Armor: The Plastik - Iktharus in 'Flurry' (available at The Secret Affair)
Face Makeup: -tb- Face Paint (Queen)
Eye Makeup: [KOOQLA] Pheasant Tattoo (available at The Secret Affair)
Face Tattoo: .ARISE. Boda Facepaint (available at The Secret Affair)
Nose Ring: *Soonsiki~ New Age Septum Ring (tungsten)
Eyes: .la petite morte. clarity eyes - blue
Hair: *Milk* Hair (now Soonsiki) - Holes in my Sweater (blacks)
Necklace: Pure Poison - Gabrielle Warrior Necklace (available at The Secret Affair)
Bracelet: Wimey - Branching Out Cuff (hematite) (available at The Secret Affair)
Body Paint: {DATUM} War paint 2.0
Pose 1: Verocity - Dahlia
Pose 2: La Malvada Mujer - Persiguiendo el Dragon

City Girl.

After recently being hired on at Seraphim (yay!) I've been kept busy busy busy, but want to and will be posting here more regularly.  Today features a few favorites, old and new.  Forgive the cafe for leaving out their Christmas decorations, I didn't mind and I don't think you will either.  It seemed appropriate since some of the stuff I wanted to share happen to be holiday gifts!

Now I don't know what your stance on mesh bodies happens to be, but I am absolutely in love with mine.  I went with a Maitreya Lara model since, well, frankly I really like the breasts on it.  You know how breast fixated I am.  The butt is also fantastic too.  I adore both it and my necklace from Cae, I'm a proud Whovian and the amount of detail put into this little charm is enough to make any fan squee.  Then at N21 I picked up this Blueberry tank top, it actually comes with a half-jacket number as well so you're getting more bang for your buck since you can get more than one color and mix and match the tank with another color jacket!  This is also the first article of mesh clothing I've purchased that has an additional size for Maitreya bodies!  Not to say that it isn't insanely easy to wear other mesh clothes with the avatar and the simple alpha HUD but that's a post for another day entirely.

Location: Penumbra Republic

The List:
Body: Maitreya Mesh Body - Lara
Hair: little bones. - Alien (black)
Necklace: Cae - Timey Wimey Things
Nose Ring: *Soonsiki - New Age Septum Ring (tungsten)
Piercings: Hebenon Vial - The Minimalist (metal)
Top: Blueberry - Nicole Tank Top (white)
Hoodie: [monso] My Tied Up Jacket (pop)
Shoes: (fd) Sneakers - 8 Black
Pants: Yasum - Army Cargos
Poses: *PosESion* - Curtain Set

Love and Peace.

Friends: Good for both company AND photos.  

Head to [Free Bird] for the skirts, (fd) for the Crew Crop tops and Miss C for the hair.  You won't regret it, you'll find a lot more than that. 

Scanning for life.

Enjoying Foresight's 'Bionic Eyes' in this shot, you won't BELIEVE all the cool stuff these eyes can do (and how many colors they come in, holy crap).  You can ping your friend, scan an area, look for a specific person and if someone is wearing the same eyes you can even chat with them using commands!   Being as big of a Blade Runner fan as I am, you can imagine how much fun I've been having with these.  

The list:

Foresight 'Bionic Eyes' in Rainbow (RARE)

Truth Hair - Jenna in Blonde

[glow] studio Lashes basic

[KoKoLoReS] BP - Pure Metallic Lips - golden

[KoKoLoReS] BP - Smokey Glitter Eyeshadows - red

Whovian at heart.

Doctor Who season 8 begins this Saturday, August 23rd. Are you ready? I'll miss the fezes and bowties (because they are ever so cool) but this new Doctor looks exciting and a little scary. But it may mean a new wave of fantastic Doctor outfits, and more Daleks scattered through our happy grid.

As for props, you know there are a few.

The List:
!O: Teacup Piglet [Piggy Who?]
*~*HopScotch*~* 'Props are cool' (Fez & Bow Tie) & *~*HopScotch*~* 'Where to?'
(fd) Bossy Boots - Shiny Red
Schadenfreude 'Fezzes are Cool' Dress Form & 'The Scarf' Dress Form
Corgi! (Matt) ~silentsparrow~
Clawtooth: That Pretty Lady - 'Orange you glad'
Tee*fy Aurelia Summer High-Low Dress (Brown)
Baiastice_Piramid Studs Leather Cuff-purple- Right


And without further ado, a trailer for the new season!

Tango Foxtrot.

First let me start off by saying I have no criticism of designers in the SL community.   If I find items that are not my personal style, it is simply my prerogative to not purchase them.  It is not a reflection of their ability to design, it is just a matter of whether I could see myself putting my avatar in it.

So you should know this blog is angled more as an explanation of Lola Tangos to avatars like me who have no fucking clue what they are or how to clothe them, only that there have been instances of teleporting somewhere and being AWED by how enormous someone's boobs were in that venue.   Or seeing someone's avatar rez in before their breasts did and wait for the two gray blobs on their chest to get some color after a few minutes.  These mesh breasts confuse people like me who have no experience outside encounters like that, so my intention is to be forthcoming and detailed.

Designers design clothes of certain styles for a reason: People buy them.   The Lola Tango community is one I've been experimenting with for the past week by first contacting a dear friend of mine (this ward of the state knows who she is) who is deeply involved with making clothes for Lolas and Tangos and loves her boobies.

The conversation went roughly as follows: 

Me: "So I want boobies."
Her: "TO CLEAVAGE!"
Me: "I have cleavage, I want boobies."
Her: "It's the sim, dumbass." 

Next, based on the information given to me (ie: Lolas are older, Tangos are newer), I decided to get a pair of Tangos.  I didn't take a long look around the sim we were on, but I did return to examine some of the styles available for Tango breasts and I'll talk about those later. 

The first thing that worried me about my new mesh breasts was sizing.  Were they going to fit MY lifestyle?  In a world where you can accidentally attach a fucking house to yourself, 'attaching' wasn't an issue; but I did not want GIANT breasts that are well in the E, F, G, H, I, J and the rest of the god damn alphabet cup range that would require two titanium backup spines to hold up.  In RL I wear a size 32DD to a 36DD (depending on bra maker).   This isn't a unique size, and yet it is not one I've been able to mimic in SL without looking... well, lame.  Tangos offered me the possibility of adding a more sincere element to my avatar that mirrors one detail about myself that SL just couldn't do properly without making me look foolish. 

Now after explaining this to my friend while I was buck naked, she told me to put them on.  I did, and they were bright red.  Not 'aw how rosy her bubblies are', I mean sunburnt.  The nipples were enormous, and had what appeared to be nipple rings the size of bracelets hanging out of them.  

Needless to say, I was concerned.   

But!   The creator of my skin has tango appliers (much like Slink appliers) and with my sunburnt tits hanging out; I ran to her mainstore (thankfully in the middle of the night) and grabbed an applier for my new Tangos. 

With the click of a button, they were now my skintone.   But they were still spine-snapping huge, ringed, and the nipples looked like they might jab someone's eye out faster than a Red Ryder carbine-action two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that measures time.    My friend told me not to worry and just open the menu.   

One click, nipple rings gone. 
Another click, giant nipples replaced with petite pink ones.
And a third click, SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIZE.

Watching them shrink was a breath of fresh air.  It isn't tricky to adjust them to sit at the right height, but you want a smooth sweep between your chest and your breast.  It helps if you think of your Tangos as a new bra.   No sideboob, no pinching.  

Now the fun part: shopping for clothes.   Now shopping for shirts was by far the biggest challenge to date.   The first dozen stores or so that I visited that had tango appliers were... not my cup of tea.  So I resorted to Marketplace.  

There is a nice lady by the name of Evangelis (that's mizevangeline resident to anyone searching for her in Marketplace) that owns ~By Eve~, and she helped a great deal when I finally found plain ol' tee shirts and hoodies that I wanted to wear.  I recommend her highly, she went out of her way to help me use an applier for the first time and has excellent customer service. 

The second store I recommend is Malfean Visions, and this is because the wide range of corsets and dresses they have usually have Tango appliers, and if they don't, the owner Lokii Violet will likely make one for the item if you let her know you need one (and you are polite.  ALWAYS BE POLITE).   Lokii explained how to make the bustline on shirts line up on the Tangos, and this is crucial information for those of you just purchasing a pair of Tangos so listen up.

1. Right click on your breasts.
2. Open edit.
3. At the top of your edit window, click 'select face'.
4. Click your Tangos again.  Make sure only the SURFACE layer is selected  (this means not the nipple).
5. Click the 'Texture' tab.
6. Adjust 'repeats per face' up or down.  I recommend horizontal, and adjust this SLOWLY. 

Bustline should line up after that.  And here's a couple things you'll find at the store with tango appliers available: 

Next I visited a store called ! ellemeno ! and found clothing that fits around your existing Tangos (like open sweaters) and some adorable dresses in styles that the nerdy alternative girl in me couldn't pass up.  I grabbed an open sweater and was happy to find that it fit on my tee shirt from ~By Eve~.  Insert squee here. 

The final store I recommend is Capacious, because the creator Amanda has a real love of boobs, a love of her customers, and combines these two things by putting them in items that look great on their Tangos.  Nothing too fantasy-oriented, just cute dresses and tee shirts that you'll adore. 

But of course I have to show this awesome gacha in the store, with the cutest freakin' nerdy dresses ever.  Trust me, you'll want to see their regular dresses and tees too.